Week in Review – May 27th, 2018

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Facebook, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRAINMAKER.com Posts in the Past Week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week:

It was a bit light last week, as I’m prepping stuff for reviews for the next week. Between now and the end of Eurobike in 6 weeks I’m currently tracking 29 new product announcements (plus ones not in my tracker yet). Hold onto your hats!

Sports Tech Deals – One Day Left!:

While the Clever Training 20% off sale ended this past week, there’s still an opportunity for you to pick up a handful of different trainers from REI for 20% off. These deals end tomorrow, Monday May 28th at 11:59PM US Pacific Time. All these links support the site, or, if you’re picking up anything else at REI, use the below link first and then wander from there.

Technically it’s a members-only sale, but it only takes a second to sign-up and then use coupon code ANNIV18 for REI. Oh, you can get free shipping to your local REI store. Woot!

For those curious, the Tacx Neo is my go-to trainer that I use when I’m not testing something else. But if you’re looking for the best bang for the buck from the available trainers in this sale, it’s the Tacx Flux.

In addition, you’ve got these sales still remaining for a few days longer:

$100 off all Fenix 5s – 5/18-6/16

$50 off Edge 25 units (base and bundle) – 5/18-5/28

20% off on Saris and CycleOps – 5/18-5/30

$50 off Edge 520 5/18-5/28

Here’s the full listing with links that support the site though:

There are no deals currently.

Enjoy (and thanks for helping support the site, even if it’s just buying toilet paper using the Amazon link on the sidebar).

3) Suunto’s big firmware update: Normally I list these down below, but this one is notable enough that I wanted to call it out up here. This post is a good overview of the new features. I’ll be covering said new features shortly in a slightly different manner. Hang tight.

4) Study published on Stryd running metrics: Note, this study doesn’t look at the power accuracy/numbers of Stryd, but rather the underlying pieces like ground contact time and vertical oscillation. Those are critically important to get right in order to estimate power. However, the bigger challenge is some agreement on what exactly is power in running (how it’s defined and at what point/way it’s measured), and then from there you can do accuracy testing. (via Titanium Geek)

6) Garmin now the 2nd largest smartwatch manufacturer after Apple: They shipped over 1 million ‘smartwatches’ last quarter. Do be aware that these studies don’t generally get actual numbers from vendors, but are more wild-assed guesses. Also keep in mind the definition of a ‘smartwatch’ changes more often than an Instagram model’s clothes. It varies from quarter to quarter, and publication to publication.

Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:

Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one-liners are perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good? Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.

Garmin Edge 1030 BETA firmware: Reduction of suck (hopefully). Apparently lots of folks have been having issues since 4.00 came out a couple weeks ago (I’m still on 3.90). This is supposed to fix some of those introduced issues. Note, you can downgrade to 3.90 if you’re having problems.

14 Comments

Garmin released a new map for the edge 1000. You can install it for free with Garmin Express. But now you need an additional micro-SD card. Because the size of the map 20180.10 is bigger then the internal 10GB memory.

Ray, re GDPR and data portability. How do you think companies will handle requests now and in the future? In theory we should now be able to request data and get it back in format that’s structured/machine readable and can therefore be imported into another site (or even better the transfer between sites is automated).

i know you talked about only certain devices getting it (only edge 1030 on the bike side), and in the connect IQ post talked about them maybe opening it up to more devices (hopefully my 820 and the 520?)

Do you see it working between your devices yet? In the Betaforum we are having no results really.. and between my 820 i see no sync up. (I am not even expecting any of the training score stuff)

The 5 homepage image links are still broken? Firefox browser with Windows 7 64bit. Cursor changes to a hand but no link even though it’s present in the html. Didn’t have this problem previously on same desktop pc?

Does TrueUp also mean that if you were to reset your device, the physiological metrics like VO2Max and Training Status will be restored when you re-setup the device and sync it with your Garmin Connect?

Doesn’t this happen already if you pick the right options for the setup procedure? I am guessing physio trueup won’t add this function, because it really just downloads other activities from GC and then re-runs the FirstBeat Analytics taking those activities into account.

5 Easy Steps To The Site

You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.

It turns out I’ve written a fair bit of stuff over the past few years – and after it disappears from my front page, a lot of it never really sees the light of day again without Google’ing skillz. Or a photographic memory…which I don’t have. I’ve taken a look back and found stuff that…continues to find a trickle of readers via web searches or forum links.

I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.